1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to folding boxes. More particularly this invention relates to folding telescoping gift boxes which simulate the appearance of loose wrapped or set-up boxes.
Boxes for containing purchased items are usually provided by department stores as a service for customers. When the item is intended to be presented as a gift, the customer usually desires that the box be attractively wrapped so that additional effort by the customer is not needed. When purchasing gift items at finer department stores, customers have come to expect that the appearance of the gift box will reflect the quality of the gift. The highest quality of gift boxes are considered to be either those which are wrapped in the entirety once the gift item has been enclosed within the box or set-up boxes which comprise a pair of telescoping boxes which have been setup by the box manufacturer by taping the corners of the box and covering the top section or both sections with paper or other attractive flexible material.
Each of these alternatives has its drawbacks, however. When boxes must be gift wrapped at the store, valuable personnel time is required; this is true whether the job is done by cashiers or by special gift wrap clerks. In larger department stores the services of two or three people may be dedicated to this task alone. Furthermore lines may form awaiting this service, especially before holidays such as Christmas, Mother's Day and Valentine's Day. Customers who have just waited in line to purchase an item do not have their mood improved by being required to wait in a second line in order to have a gift wrapped. Nor, in the alternative, do they appreciate having their time waiting for sales personnel to ring up purchases, extended by waiting for other customers' gifts to be wrapped.
The use of set-up boxes helps alleviate the personnel and waiting problems, but does have its own drawbacks. Set-up boxes are strong and attractive and thus are highly desirable for presenting quality gifts. However these boxes are also bulky, taking up far more space than a folded box. Thus, with a sizeable inventory, especially as may be needed during holiday seasons, considerable floor space must be dedicated to the storage of these boxes, floor space which could be put to better use holding merchandise inventory. In addition, bulky items require extra handling when being transported either within or without the store because the amount transported is limited by size rather than weight. Also, there is considerable breakage of these boxes during transportation and storage studies have shown this to be in the amount of between 16 and 20 percent. Furthermore, those gift recipients who choose to retain gift boxes for reuse find these set-up boxes hard to store, offsetting their desirable appearance with undesirable impracticalities.
It has therefore long been a goal in the art to provide folding boxes which combine their inherent advantage of compactness with the quality physical appearance of loose wrapped set-up boxes.
2. Description of the Prior Art
A number of loose wrap simulating gift boxes are found in the prior art. These generally are comprised of composite blanks which include a sheet of stiff but foldable material, such as paperboard, attached to a sheet of flexible decorative material, such as paper or foil. Many of these boxes have overlapping exterior flaps and thus simulate boxes that have been wrapped after enclosing the gift. Among other box configurations, the ones that most closely simulate the exterior appearance of telescoping loose wrapped gift boxes include U.S. Pat. No. 2,769,588 to Beck, U.S. Pat. No. 4,765,535 to Michetti, U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,679,210 and 3,837,561. However the boxes of the prior art are difficult to assemble into the set-up structure. They frequently require that the assembler properly fold diagonal webs and/or that segments derived from the end and side panels be overlapped in a specific order. This means that new personnel must be trained in their assembly and that even experienced personnel may take an inordinate amount of time to set up the boxes. During busy periods this means customer waits, the hiring and training of additional personnel and/or overtime wages. Cutting the time needed for assembly of boxes is thus highly desirable from the retailer's viewpoint.
Furthermore, while all these boxes may present an elegant exterior appearance, this impression is dispelled upon removing and inverting the uppermost telescoping unit. The interior of the boxes of the prior art does not give the same elegant impression as does the exterior. This may be due to overlapping flaps or it may be due to a discontinuous or stepped line of the decorative wrapping. In either case the box interior patently shows its origin as a folding rather than a set-up box.
Moreover, in the prior art, a cut edge of decorative flexible wrap affixed to the stiff foldable material is frequently exposed as a box edge and detracts from the desired elegant appearance of the box.